|
Post by toei on Jan 3, 2024 17:56:48 GMT -5
Yeah that's been my usual pattern, I complain about a game being too unfair and I beat it the next day or something. Did you know that you sometimes get a higher dopamine release when you fail at something you're invested in than when you succeed? That's what must be keeping me coming back with hard games. After too many deaths in a row, I get sick of it, put it down feeling like I don't want to play it anymore, and then an hour later or the next day I want to play it again. But I just think I would enjoy it more if I was a little better at it from the jump, and maybe some experience with other games might be transferable.
With MGS, the part I saw was Snake and somebody else standing in a doorway, just shooting down waves after waves of enemy soldiers or guards coming in. And I realized it might be more my style than I thought. I had a blast with Tenchu - I hate stealth sequences in games where you're trying to sneak past people and you have to start over if you get noticed. But Tenchu was much more free than that - you were rarely trying to sneak past anyone most of the time, mostly just assassinate them, and if you failed, you could fight or run or (maybe) hide. In the end even though it was divided into separate missions, it was largely a freeform action-adventure game with a convincing ninja atmosphere - except unlike purely open-ended games, you always had a clear goal, so you didn't waste time stumbling around looking for something to do. There was a fair deal of action and a fair deal of exploration. So I figure MGS is probably somewhat like that - an action-adventure game at heart with a spy/stealth twist, much like old-school survival horror is really just action-adventure with a horror theme and limited bullets.
|
|
|
Post by Xeogred on Jan 3, 2024 18:58:24 GMT -5
Even I didn't beat WinBack, toei . Have you gotten to some interior levels yet? The game has two aesthetics on top of the one BGM track or two. I remember all those outdoor environments and then eventually you start having some indoor factory/lab like levels. I think it got pretty tough. It was maybe a combination of the difficulty and feeling long in the tooth that I never finished it, even as a kid, when we'd spend all our energy on the finate amount of games we owned.
With MGS, the part I saw was Snake and somebody else standing in a doorway, just shooting down waves after waves of enemy soldiers or guards coming in. And I realized it might be more my style than I thought. I had a blast with Tenchu - I hate stealth sequences in games where you're trying to sneak past people and you have to start over if you get noticed. But Tenchu was much more free than that - you were rarely trying to sneak past anyone most of the time, mostly just assassinate them, and if you failed, you could fight or run or (maybe) hide. In the end even though it was divided into separate missions, it was largely a freeform action-adventure game with a convincing ninja atmosphere - except unlike purely open-ended games, you always had a clear goal, so you didn't waste time stumbling around looking for something to do. There was a fair deal of action and a fair deal of exploration. So I figure MGS is probably somewhat like that - an action-adventure game at heart with a spy/stealth twist, much like old-school survival horror is really just action-adventure with a horror theme and limited bullets.
First part sounds like a cinematic/action moment. Yeah, the MGS games are chalk full of variety and big set pieces. You can literally melee/punch people to death in MGS1 and it's pretty effective. They eliminated that in sequels and it bugged me back in the day, lol. Melee just turns into non-lethal knocking enemies out for a bit and CQC complicated combat in MGS3, etc. But in MGS1... just run around the corner and give them the two punch super kick combo to death.
|
|
|
Post by toei on Jan 3, 2024 19:37:20 GMT -5
Xeogred Yeah, most of the game takes place in that big facility. It think there's maybe 3-4 stages outside in the beginning, then you make it into that big building where 90% of the game takes place. Those stages are long, though, so it feels like a while. This was Omega Force's first single-player game ever, and I think they lacked experience. Koei basically set up this new internal team with new hires and young employees in the mid-'90s to make action games (if you recall, prior to that they only ever made strategy games and simulations, usually historical, and sometimes RPGs) and they started with the 3D fighter version of Dynasty Warriors. Right after Winback they made the first real Musou game as we know them, and that became their main purpose. But with Winback I think they had some great ideas and didn't know how to balance things at all, and there was no one at Koei would could help with that since they didn't know action games. Once you're in the building there's a lot of backtracking and running around the same areas looking for things, so in many ways it's an action-adventure game, but for some reason it's still divided into stages, and you can only save when you finish a stage. The duration varies wildly; some of them are under 10 minutes long, some of them took me half an hour, not counting deaths. To give you an example of how hard it's become, I have 2:45 on the in-game timer, while PSCX2 is showing 5 hours. You have checkpoints, but the time between checkpoints also varies wildly. Apparently the final stage is like an hour long with just one checkpoint or something and it's filled with crazy cheap death moments. At the point I made it, there are instant deaths at the end of long sections, it's just a bitch sometimes. And I'm not even a third into it. More and more, I run into weird situations that result in very quick deaths - enemies coming at you from both sides is hard to deal with in that game cause they take 4-5 shots with the normal gun most of the time (1 or 2 with the shotgun, though you don't have the ammo to *always* use it) and you die in about as many shots as them. Enemies standing in places where you can't hit them but they can hit you. Barriers that only protect you from some enemies, so you have to figure out in an instant who to take out and hide from the rest, or learn through deaths where they're gonna be. I think what I would need to practice, first, is how to switch weapons quickly - how many button presses goes from basic gun to shotgun or machine gun, for example. That's something I did with Hagane on the SNES that really helped. Also, the game has both auto-aiming and a real lock-on, which you can switch with L2 and R2. So one thing that might work when there's no cover is locking on an enemy, firing once, switching the lock to the guy next to him, firing, then going back, etc., to keep them both neutralized, because one shot will stun them but then they may be invincible for a few frames (it depends). I don't know if the lock-on is reliable enough for that, though. Also, when I talk about how generic war and soldier game titles tend to be: Winback: Covert Operations Covert Ops: Nuclear Dawn Two entirely unrelated games related within months of each other.
|
|
|
Post by Xeogred on Jan 3, 2024 20:05:26 GMT -5
Covert Turds
Dang that definitely refreshes me a bit on Winback. The long winded levels at some point with only a single checkpoint or so and tons of cheap instant deaths/traps. Yep, that all sounds painfully familiar. Losing progress always feels heavier in 3D games, or that's how I felt as a kid haha. Probably because in 8-16bit stuff you're back in the action and moving pretty quickly to where you fell off or whatever. But in something more methodical and tricky like Winback, it gets tiresome.
I should definitely give the second game a look this year, since I'm so curious. But as you pointed out I think with another development team? It's probably way different but maybe a cool game. That was a fun history lesson, I always forget it was an oddball Koei game for its time. Yeah, really didn't see them doing much in my wheelhouse in the earlier generations. Now post 2010 they have Tecmo and Team Ninja, so they got a bit covered.
|
|
|
Post by Ex on Jan 3, 2024 21:48:02 GMT -5
Did you know that you sometimes get a higher dopamine release when you fail at something you're invested in than when you succeed? That's what must be keeping me coming back with hard games. After too many deaths in a row, I get sick of it, put it down feeling like I don't want to play it anymore, and then an hour later or the next day I want to play it again. Now you understand why the Souls games are such mega hits. Yeah those kind of stealth games suck. Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell games are usually not like that. In those series I always sneak around, then stealth kill guards off one by one. If I screw up and get seen, then I bust out and slaughter as many as I can, then disappear into the shadows again. MGS and SC are both really fun series, where you are effectively a modern ninja.
|
|
|
Post by toei on Jan 3, 2024 21:52:25 GMT -5
Yeah Cavia gets credits for Winback 2 (best known for Nier, Drakengard and the genre-relevant Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, though I'm the one guy that really liked Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance). I'm not sure if they really did all of it or what because when you look in the credits you don't find many matches for other Cavia games, you have people who worked at Scarab (a pretty crappy company that later became feelplus, they made an unpopular third-person shooter called Mindjack for Square Enix). Lots of people with credits on Nextech games - that's the company that made Ranger X and Crusader of Centy on the Genesis - including the director... so yeah, no idea who really made it. Maybe Koei put together a team from various third party companies, which happens pretty often in Japan.
|
|
|
Post by Xeogred on Jan 3, 2024 22:03:12 GMT -5
I love Nier and have played some other Cavia stuff... there's usually some charm to be found buried in the janky poor production values.
Ex: Did you forget HOLY CHRISTMAS FISHER, MISSION FAILED!! - This has always been a huge reason why I vastly prefer MGS to Splinter Cell. I remember the Splinter Cell games having a lot of those "Hey your pinkie toe was detected in the light, mission over!!!" lol. But it's been awhile. I can appreciate that they're more hardcore, pure stealth games. MGS is stealth compared to other action games but it's kind of overblown as its identity. I'd say it's like 20% of the series. Much like how Resident Evil is a lot more than just zombies.
|
|
|
Post by Ex on Jan 3, 2024 22:26:57 GMT -5
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex / Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance I ended up not finishing Beat Down (I liked the combat and gritty atmosphere, not so much the rest), but GitS:SAC on PS2 is a really awesome third person shooter. I loved that one. Granted I'm a strong fan of the source material. I remember the Splinter Cell games having a lot of those "Hey your pinkie toe was detected in the light, mission over!!!" lol This is mostly true of just the first Splinter Cell game. The sequels progressively got less uptight about stealth requirements. Here's how I would rate the SC games I've beaten: Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (2002) (PC) = 7.5/10 Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow (PC) (2004) = 8/10 Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (2005) (PC) = 9/10 Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent (2006) (original Xbox) = 8/10 Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction (2010) (Xbox 360) = 8/10 Overall a well reviewed series for me. Also, with all the SC games above that have the unique local co-op campaigns, I beat those with other people too. Local co-op split-screen SC is a blast. I have not yet beaten the final game in the series; Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist (2013), but I intend to do so this year. I simply forgot it existed until recently. I've got it on Xbox 360. Also might beat the Xbox 360 version of Double Agent, as it differs considerably from the original Xbox version I beat. Lastly, I've said it before, but I'll say it again; MGS has way better storytelling than SC, but SC often has better game design (actual stealth espionage action with high tech gadgetry). The best MGS game to me is MGS3:Subsistence (beat it on PS2) and the best SC is Chaos Theory (beat it on PC). Those are the must plays of the two series to me. I've beaten all the mainline MGS games except Phantom Pain. I'd sure like to finally get around to it this year. SO MANY GAMES ... NOT SO MUCH FREE TIME.
|
|
|
Post by Sarge on Jan 4, 2024 12:51:19 GMT -5
Yeah, Splinter Cell is a more grounded series, you play Metal Gear Solid for... well, really just to wonder what bonkers thing is going to happen next. It's more military espionage anime.
|
|